When Broadway called, Annie answered, drove to NYC and spent 30 years as a Broadway production wardrobe supervisor, rarely seeing daylight and having nothing of a life outside of her work. After 3 decades, enough was more than enough. She drove back to Cape Cod where her ancestors had landed in 1635 and where her grandfather, Ben, had owned several cranberry bogs, beginning in 1911. In the 1930s, as the Cape cranberry industry started to plummet due to competition with large industrial cranberry farms off-cape, Ben sold off individual bogs, his last in 1959. It was this bog that Annie was able to purchase a few years after her return. She has added bee hives on the periphery.

She now has a store on the property which she opens only on October weekends and where we buys fresh cranberries and a gallon jar of honey. Not surprising, the cranberry honey has a slight tart finish, mostly perceptible if you wait and search for it.

Annie uses "dry harvesting," which entails picking by hand using a claw scoop. The berries that grow on vines close to the ground. Larger operations use "wet harvesting" by flooding the bog and collecting the crop as it floats to the surface with the aid of specially designed tractors.

Annie didn't want any photos of her or her workers or of the interior of the shop for security reasons. And the sun was too intense for decent shots of the bog. So, here is where, at the end of a very long day, Annie and her husband sit, sip and chat.

About photoMentoris

The founding principles of photoMENTORIS is to have a place where professional and enthusiast photographers could come and meet in order to teach, share and learn from each other. It is our goal to foster this principle in an atmosphere that encourages creativity and exploration and promotes the advancement of our art through peer mentoring and supportive critique, while having fun along the way.